Pilot Training Requires Regulatory Overhaul To Improve Safety

Growing indicators suggest a critical need for pilot training reform across the airline industry but this is easier said than done because of efforts to block such reform.

On an icy night in 2009, Colgan Airways Flight 3407 crashed in Buffalo killing all on board because the pilots were tired and couldn’t cope with conditions and the stall that ensued. The crash resulted in regulatory changes to pilot requirements and training. However, some of those changes have been counterproductive and now, a growing number of indicators suggest by focusing on this single accident, the industry missed a critical opportunity to develop more meaningful safety reforms.

In fact, questions are now surfacing as to whether Colgan families are getting in the way of important safety initiatives. Those questions center on whether political maneuvering over the past six years has blocked efforts to develop a better, more holistic approach to the safety issues raised by Colgan, an approach that would adopt recommendations stemming from low-fare and major carrier accidents both before and after Colgan.

Monday, those blocking maneuvers surfaced again when the Colgan families and their New York Congressional legislators called a press conference to raise concerns about provisions in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization legislation they thought would roll back a key provision in the 2010 Airline Safety and Extension Act setting 1,500 hours as an arbitrary minimum before a pilot can take the right seat of an airliner.

Released just yesterday, the Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization (AIRR) Act, does no such thing. Monday’s press conference by the Colgan coalition was a shabby attempt to grab headlines to rekindle emotional baggage ahead of the AIRR release Tuesday.

While there are laudable parts of the 2010 legislation passed after Colgan including finally achieving the long-awaited reform of pilot flight and duty time, they pale in comparison to the unintended consequences born of the establishment of that 1,500-hour rule.

Indeed, the 1500-hour rule is the lynchpin of the controversy and has led to an unnecessary pilot shortage, a serious dilution in the quality of pilot candidates and the wholesale abandonment of communities across the nation.

These consequences are no surprise given the fact that the families' well-intentioned desire to ensure a Colgan accident never happens again was co-opted by pilot unions. Those who follow unions and their 30-year fight against the outsourcing of service to regionals realized very early that the Colgan safety initiatives dovetailed too closely with union political agendas of the last three decades to deny the link.

The 1,500-hour minimum is universally condemned by safety advocates, who say the arbitrary number is ineffective and nonsensical considering both Colgan pilots exceeded that number. Even the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said hours alone are a poor metric for safety, advocating for a reliance on the quality of pilot training programs as a more appropriate metric. So it was no surprise that AIRR includes a provision for FAA to develop a better metric. Monday’s press conference by Senator Charles Schumer and the Colgan families was the opening round which could stop that effort.

The bill recognizes growing concerns in the industry pilot training reform is needed but hard to do because of Colgan. For instance, Colgan families denounced proposals to establish new pilot training programs by JetBlue and in the regional industry illustrating the problem. When Forbes asked Colgan Spokesperson Scott Maurer about the proposed programs, he rejected them sight unseen dismissing them as an attempt to reduce the 1,500-hour requirement.

Had the Colgan coalition bothered to examine these proposals, they would have found that, in fact, neither proposal suggested a reduction in hours precisely because the politically charged atmosphere created by Colgan families. It would have also discovered the proposals significantly improve safety by adopting major advances in pilot training resulting from such crashes as AirAsia Flight 8501, Air France Flight 447 and Asiana Flight 214. These accidents, called into question cockpit automation, effective cockpit communication and, like Colgan, the deterioration of basic pilot skills.

The coalition also ignores growing signs that airlines cannot wait for regulators. United recently announced extra training sessions or its 12,000 pilots, according to this week’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story, suggesting just that. United’s move comes on the heels of Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General study recently highlighting the need to reform pilot training and improve Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversight as explained in this story.

Unlike Colgan families, legislators crafting AIRR heeded these signs and called for the creation of a panel of aviation safety experts to evaluate existing methods for training flight crews as a result. While a hopeful sign that we can move beyond the political baggage surrounding Colgan toward scientifically based reforms, the idea of a study is disappointing. That is Washington speak for kicking the can down the road. If Congress doesn’t want to do something it calls for a study that is destined to join the piles of previous studies already gathering dust on agency shelves.

It is doubtful further study is needed, given the conclusions of numerous accident reports, all we now know about improving pilot training as illustrated by proposals by the regional airline industry and JetBlue, the OIG report and moves by United to strengthen its pilot training. Chillingly, it also begs the question whether, as WSJ suggested, the industry has time to wait for such long-term solutions. Certainly, the industry has demonstrated it is way ahead of legislators and regulators on these issues and it is not too far a stretch to conclude it is because of Colgan.

Community Air Service, a Lost Generation of Pilots

Lost in all of the debate is the huge impact on hundreds of communities across the nation resulting from the pilot shortage created by the 1,500-hour rule.

Victims’ families would say that safety trumps economics and they would be right if the stubborn insistence on the 1500-hour rule had not conspired to impact both safety and the economy. Indeed, as accidents have shown, and safety advocates and regulators have attested, 1500 hours has nothing to do with safety. However, it has everything to do with creating a pilot shortage.

That shortage is directly responsible for the wholesale loss of air service across the nation as recounted in more than a dozen articles published by WSJ, the Washington Post and numerous others but completely ignored by Washington. Flightpath Economics (FE) concluded community losses are growing, identifying 239 communities at risk, accounting for $2.1 billion in domestic airline revenues, affecting over 10% of the U.S. population and 7% of U.S. GDP.

“The glue of our economy is the airline industry,” said FE Partner Dan Akin. “If any part of the industry fails to participate, there will be an economic disaster. To date all we have seen is Band-Aid solutions to a genuine economic crisis. You cannot pump out pilots in six months so this problem will be with us for years to come. It will all hit the fan in 2016 and requires a wholesale rethink of the entire issue.”

ALPA says it is a matter of economics, not a pilot shortage, that is causing the loss of this air service. "Whether airlines serve a particular small community is based on economics and includes factors such as how much passengers are willing to pay, whether passengers will drive or whether there’s an alternate airport nearby, and what financial incentives might be available from the federal government or local community—in short, is the flight profitable," it said.

If that were so, then why are airports all over the country hearing from airlines the reason they are losing service is because of the pilot shortage, not because the route doesn't make money? Why have there been more than a dozen articles citing such losses result from a pilot shortage. The fact is, airlines need the feed from these communities to make their hubs work economically. Airlines themselves are also citing the pilot shortage is making a difference in their network decisions as reflected by comments in earnings calls and by what airports are hearing from their mainline carriers.

Today, just as unions planned, pilot shortages have prompted a shift in flying from regionals back to the majors explained in this story. In addition, carriers are acquiring larger aircraft both at the mainline and regional levels. Larger aircraft mean lower frequency and the move to larger regional jets and the acquisition of small, narrow-body aircraft further exacerbates community losses. The deterioration of service often leads to a downward spiral because fewer flights means diminished connectivity, longer layovers and fewer destinations.

These communities are the latest victims in the Colgan tragedy and they have no voice in the fight between the Colgan coalition and safety advocates. They can only stand by helplessly as they lose their access to the national transportation grid and watch their industries move elsewhere.

Jeff Muldar, executive director of Tulsa Airport, who also serves as chair of the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE) noted the pilot shortage has caused the loss of air service to more than 30 cities since 2013 while another 86 have lost 10% or more of their service, including such major markets as Cleveland, Memphis, Louisville and state capitols as Tallahassee, Jackson, MS, Harrisburg, PA and Cheyenne, WY.

“Right now, the pilot shortage is putting billions of dollars at risk,” said InterVistas Executive Vice President William Swelbar, who has followed pilot and union issues for decades. “This is not inconsequential. Nearly every hub with regionals as the backbone of its flying are gone. The pilot shortage and loss of service are inextricably linked.”

More importantly, these communities have strong underlying economies that would support air service were it not for the pilot shortage. “Tulsa is not a small airport, but this year we lost additional frequencies to both Minneapolis and Detroit,” Muldar told Forbes. “The market supports the additional service but when we asked Delta what was going on, they said their regionals didn’t have enough flight crews to re-establish service. Other airports have seen carriers come in but they can’t maintain the service for lack of pilots. This has nothing to do with airline restructuring because the losses occurred after the new pilot regulations went into effect in 2013.”

Ontario,
CA, estimated that loss of service has cost the region almost $3 billion based on the number of jobs lost at the airport, the drop in travelers to the area as well as the multiplier affect such things have on the community, said Muldar.

“Despite the important role of regionals, no one seems to care that they are out of pilots,” said Aviation Consultant Kit Darby, an ATP Certification Training Program instructor at a major U.S. airline. “So the regionals run out of pilots and then the majors run out of passengers because regionals cannot staff the feeder flights.”

Another victim of the new regulations are fledgling pilots. Economic upheavals during the last 15 years have produced a lost generation of pilots and the new regulations threaten to repeat that cycle which will be covered in Part III.

Political Expediency Leads To Bad Policy

It is little understood that when Congress gets involved in aviation safety, it is largely about pandering to headlines and subsequent lobbying to create quick fixes. Too often results fall short of what is really needed and distracts us from adopting safety improvements that are much harder to do as happened with Colgan.

“Tragedies trigger calls for action,” wrote the National Review in The Pilot Shortage Made in Congress. “Unfortunately, such pleas are often more emotional than rational, resulting in bad policy. The legislation passed in response to the Colgan plane crash is a classic example. Such bad policy has real consequences, which are already playing out.”

The publication put that in safety terms. “Keep in mind that between January and June 2013, 15,470 people died in motor-vehicle crashes in the United States,” it said, citing a New York Times report saying that since 2009, the death risk from an airline accident in the U.S. is one in 45 million flights.

There is no quick fix and reform efforts will require warring parties – management and labor, major airlines and their regional partners, regulators, legislators and airline accident families – to understand all the issues swirling around the industry to forge the future of pilot training. This series will explore the issues raised by Colgan including those blithely ignored by families in the wake of the accident.

Solutions will also require aviation universities to examine current training programs to reduce costs to students who now incur over $100,000 in debt to graduate. Finally, it will take a huge increase in training capacity at flight schools and universities alike because nearly half of all students currently enrolled are from abroad, paid to train in the U.S. and go home.

First, however, it will require the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) to become part of the solution and stop ignoring a mountain of data confirming that we are, in fact, in the middle of a pilot shortage. ALPA suggests there is no shortage, just a shortage of pilots willing to work for minimum wage, disingenuous at best considering the unions’ own role in setting regional pay scales explained in Part III. While that argument may have been true in the past, higher pay at regionals is already the norm more than doubling the $21,000 that shocked consumers in 2009.

More importantly, increased pilot pay does nothing to address the fact that the 1,500-hour rule irrevocably severed the pipeline for new pilots between flight school graduates with 250 hours and the right seat.

“The most important takeaway is the fact the entire industry must enter into conversations about the pilot and other aviation professional workforce supply,” said Martin Rottler, a lecturer at the Ohio State University Center for Aviation Studies. “This is not just about pilots but about air traffic controllers and maintenance technicians. We can no longer afford to silo ourselves as labor, education, management, general aviation and manufacturing. If we do, the fundamental shift that will come won’t be pretty.”

It is long past time for regulators, legislators and victims’ families to take a second look at what the legislative and regulatory initiatives wrought, not in attempt to dilute safety but because there is so much more to safety than an arbitrary number of hours.

Sound bites by politicians as happened on Monday should never replace the hard work necessary for meaningful safety improvements. In fact, Colgan short-circuited the regulatory process, allowing individuals with no expertise in flight training or aviation safety to write safety rules in Congress. What the Colgan coalition needs to understand is that while it is extremely important that they participate in the process to ensure their concerns are heard, such involvement also comes with the responsibility to understand all the issues and ensure there are no negative safety consequences as happened here.

The new effort launched Monday by Colgan families and their allies is sad because it wastes more time in getting much needed training improvements. The two sides actually have the same goals but have been talking past each other for seven years. Working with all stakeholders on meaningful solutions to the industry’s monumental problems would be a powerful legacy, indeed – just for the courage it will take to reach across the divide to take the first step.

With decades of experience covering aviation, I am a freelance writer with bylines in the industry's top publications. I authored Time Flies…The History of SkyWest Airlines and blog at Winging It, unconventional wisdom about the aviation industry. In addition to trends in bu...